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Thursday, 25 October 2007

I was lucky enough to see, some years ago, this beautiful hoverfly, Callicera Aenea, at Clay Hill in the New Forest.

Why do I love flies? I really don't know, but I just never get tired of looking at them, and there are always new ones to discover. Like most amateur entomologists, I was first attracted to butterflies and moths - lepidoptera - but then decided to specialise in flies. As the class name suggests, Diptera are characterised by having just two wings, whereas most other insects have two pairs of wings.

To me, flies are incredibly beautiful, as are any artworks that take flies as their subject.

For example, the amazing pavement artist, Julian Beever, created this piece:

Beever specialises in anamorphic art, in which the image is distorted in 2d, and only appears as it should when viewed from a certain direction. It's exactly the effect used for advertising images in sports arenas and race circuits, where the company logo's ideal viewing point is designed to coincide with camera positions.

Beever doesn't particularly specialise in insect art, but there are others who do.

For instance, Mike Libby creates wonderful micro-quasi-mechanical sculptures out of dead insects and watch parts. Although his gallery doesn't have any flies at the moment, he does take commissions. Actually, his bees and beetles are my favourites:The absolutely brilliant Stephanie Korschun at Sasquatch Designs produces highly detailed scientific illustrations, some of which she sells as t-shirts:

She also does sweatshirts and hoodies, as well as monochrome notelets in the same designs.